April 2017: I was starting to think about where we should go for our spring break (which is always during Easter week) and my sister offered me a timeshare week that she had in the bank. She has a membership with a company called RCI and this allows you to save or switch weeks and locations with your timeshare. We had the option to go anywhere in the world! Decisions, decisions….
Well, the determining factor ended up being the cost of the airplane tickets. I searched all over the US (mostly ski areas) and Latin America, assuming that if it was closer, it would be cheaper. But those Latin Catholics like to travel during Semana Santa so everything was exorbitant.
OK, how about Europe? Someplace somewhat warm? Bingo. Portugal and Spain had the least expensive tickets. So we looked at our options for locations and decided on Málaga. The south of Spain must be lovely at this time of year. (Secretly, I picked the south of Spain because I knew it would be easy to get to Morocco and I was dying to check it out!).
We realized after we booked the apartment that it could sleep 6 people so we decided to invite Roger’s parents to go with us and they happily accepted.
Getting to Málaga from Medellin was surprisingly easy. Avianca has a direct overnight flight from Medellin to Madrid, although it is a challenging 10hrs, and then it is just a 1hr flight to Málaga.
We stayed at the Club Delta Mar Crown Resort which is an apartment hotel. It is not located in Málaga but is about a 40mins drive south along the coast. It is situated in a residential area and has 2 pools and a clubhouse. The pool at the clubhouse was heated but the other was not. It was a 5 minute walk to the grocery store and some restaurants and about 15mins to the beach. The beach was rocky and not great for swimming. Because this hotel is part of the Crown Resort group, we had the option to visit the other Crown locations and use their amenities but we never did. We had too many other things to see.
Our apartment was dated and sparse but adequately met our needs. It had 2 bedrooms, one with a queen and one with 2 twin beds, which the adults used. There was also a sleeper sofa but the kids decided that they did not want to share a bed so they just slept on the 2 separate sofas. There was an equipped kitchen and a table for 4. The apartment had 2 drawbacks: the walk up to the third floor and the single bathroom.
Since we were only going to be there for 6 days and we wanted to do as much as we could (and I am a planner), we had a schedule. We all arrived on Sunday evening.
Here was our itinerary for the week:
Three countries (I recognize that Gibraltar is not a country, it is a British Territory, but they use a different currency, speak a different language, and we went through immigration, so it counts) and two continents in one week.
We were ready!!
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